As the Sea Promised
by Hellsig Otoupeim
Summary: She is the blue of the midday sea and the gold of the setting sun and the red of barren earth. Uzushio calls her people home.


Disclaimer: I do not own the Naruto Universe. If I did, then Kakashi's face would have been revealed a lot sooner, Naruto and Sasuke would have died in the final showdown and Sakura would be Rokudaime. (Dystopian!AU ftw)

 **As the Sea Promised  
**

It is a low hum in their bones. (They may have forgotten her name, the ringing syllables of the vortex she is; but they didn't forget her colours, her songs, and they come back to her.) She calls them, calls them home amongst the crying seagulls and the waving foam – calls them home to the ocean and the sun bleeding gold onto the sea. She calls them home to the whirlpool and glittering azure spans across gilded reds. She is the blue of the midday sea and the gold of the setting sun and the red of barren earth.

She calls them, calls _to_ them no matter where they are across these lands. Her song echoes in their bones because she is calling them home. They never will come.

She is shattered.

.

They (her parents) call her Uzu. They do it, not out of misplaced nostalgia or barren regrets, but because she _is_ Uzushio in a way that stills their hearts. They name her Uzu because her hair is a striking red and her skin is suntanned gold and her eyes, those big wide eyes that have yet to see the world, her eyes are the colour of the midday sea. They call her Uzu because she laughs in their home, runs across doorways and imitates the calls of seagulls she has never heard. They call her Uzu because there is a low, misplaced compulsion in their bones to do so. (They call her Uzu because her fingers hold a brush before she can speak.) They name her Uzu not out of misplaced nostalgia or barren regrets, but because she brings _home_ in a way that only Uzushio has ever done. They love her.

She becomes Arashi when they die. Arashi, because the vortex has become a storm and the whirlpool can be deadly. Arashi, because Uzushio is too beautiful, too _loving_ for the unleashed fury that Arashi is. Arashi is seven when her parents die. (Her hair is the colour of blood and her skin is brown like mud and her eyes are the midnight sky.) She cries like the creaking of masts in a tempest and thunders across halls in a rushing footfall of steps. The seagulls die in the storm. Arashi is born because Uzushio is _broken_.

.

She is burning. Embers red flicker amongst the water. She is drowned. Fish swim along arrays still faintly glowing, and even after all these years, she refuses to die. She will live, because she still hums through their veins and calls to them and _sings_ when they are lost in the darkness of the night. She blazes high and far and her dying breath is a beacon to the world.

 _Come to me_.

.

Perhaps Arashi feels it more strongly than most because she has nothing else to feel, beyond the humming cry of seagulls and the scent of the sea. Perhaps she feels it more strongly because in her core, in her bones, Arashi is still – will always be – Uzushio. Perhaps she feels it more strongly because she's better at listening than most. Arashi feels the song in her head, allows herself to be enthralled by it. She is in love with the golden hues of the past and at night, when there is darkness and worlds half remembered, Arashi _recalls_ the gilded marble, the red worn earth and the endless blue – stretching so far beyond, that where the sky ended and the sea began was never clear. Arashi has never been to Uzushio, she is too young, but she remembers in a way that has nothing to do with her eyes, that there used to be a proud city on the sea, one where the chiming of bells could never be out drowned by the rhythm of life. She remembers, Arashi does despite the storm, maybe perhaps because the eye of the cyclone is quiet when so many roar. Arashi remembers, between the shadow and the night, but in remembering Arashi gives life.

.

She is not weak but dormant. She lingers there, quietly, amongst the growing weeds and the ebbing waves. Everything is drowned out from underwater, but she remembers the sun warming the stone and the cry of seagulls. There are no seagulls any more, because there is nowhere to land. She has been swallowed by the sea, swallowed by the quiet, hungry, restless waves and she waits. Her time will come, between the rising of the tides and the shallows of the moon. She will wait for it; will wait with a patience indefinite because waiting means nothing to her. She is not weak but dormant, sleeping quietly as the waves try to chip away her stone. They cannot. She is strong, strong but hidden and one day her people will listen to her voice.

Listen, because they hear her already. Voices are rising in the West. Her time will come – soon now. She mustn't wait long. She hums. She is _ready_.

.

The humming is an itch under her skin. Arashi cannot be rid of it, finds herself succumbing to the madness and looking East, east to the growing mountains and the invisible sea. She is being pulled, being called by an ancient voice that booms in her bones and brings her home. Its humming under her skin is a song she cannot sing, but it withers and wilts and clings onto her flesh. Arashi cannot ignore it.

She doesn't remember packing her belongings or leaving behind the lands she knew. She scarcely remembers the mountains she trekked through, in a caravan or alone – all of these, all of the breath-taking wonders of the world, have been replaced by a single minded love for the sea that blossomed before her, quiet and long and still; _home_ in a way that nothing before had ever been. She doesn't remember the faces of the people she left behind, doesn't remember the names of the places she has promised to come back to. Arashi is wed to the sea from the instant she sees it, is married to the shore on the distant horizon and the ghost of a city only she can see. Arashi is Uzushio, married to Uzushio is a way that should not be but is. Arashi is in love with a place she has never seen.

She stands there, on the shores until the eastern sky has grown dark and the strange stars are all out. Arashi comes from a place too far away for the overhanging canopy to be constant, comes from an arboreal land where she can scarcely feel the wind humming against her face. Arashi comes from the forest, but it is in the endless expenses of the sky, the sea, the sand, that she finds her home. The horizon is a promise Arashi has never made, but it imposes itself as evidence. The first step she takes onto the sea is steady.

.

She can feel them, can feel _her_ as she slowly moves home. Her seals glow brighter in the bowels of the sea, but she is patient and she can wait. They are coming, all of them coming home to her. They have missed her, missed her as she has missed them, missed her children and her love and she feels a keen sense of possession overtake her being as she thinks of them. She remembers the blood that soaked her stones, the red that covered gold and matted hair just a shade lighter. She remembers the cries of seagulls drowned in the pleas of the dead and she can feel, within herself, the steady hum of life which has kept her in place. She is not kind in the way some are inclined to believe her to be. She is loving and possessive, jealous and fiercely protective of what is hers. They were ripped away from her once and she will never let them go again.

She can feel them coming home. They are coming back, singing to her with their soaring hearts as the words of her awakening reach them. She is coming back, she _is_ back. Soon, she will be standing again.

(No more fish gallivanting across her gilded pillars –but _children_ , children with laughter in their eyes and songs on their lips. Children running across her paved streets and giggling at her fountains. Children with the sea in their eyes and the sun on their skin and the earth in their hair. _Children_.)

Her children.

.

She comes slowly, walking across the waves tirelessly. Arashi is stilled by the magnificence of a ghost, of something _not quite there_ and there is a breath that wavers across her skin. She doesn't know if it is the wind or a caress from the land, but Arashi fades slowly amongst the waves. She is home.

The sun kisses her skin gold and the red of her hair stands stark against the midday blue sea. She is a reminder of something not quite gone yet and as Arashi pervades a Fuuton jutsu to her needs, she sinks beneath the waves.

Arashi does not look up. (If she did, she would see the mirroring sun across the waves, dancing beams of light in the cerulean blue that lured and called her to them. She would see beauty in all its treachery, an endless mist of things not quite there she cannot grasp when reaching for them.) Arashi looks down, down into the darkness of the land because she can _see_ , can see into the abyss below and the shadows and there is a faintly glowing city calling to here there. There is blood still tainting the water.

Arashi sinks down, lower than before, sinks so low she believes she might run out of air – and still she goes. There is something calling her in the waves below, something which clutches at her core and forces Arashi to sink within the coral reefs. Oxygen escapes her aching lung as she forces herself to recycle the air in the bubble, calls another one to sink by the sheer force of her will and looks. The ground isn't far below. (The light barely shimmers here.)

The broken pillars reach out to her, call to her like half broken fingers painful with arthritis. They draw her in, defenceless in their clutches and Arashi is as much a victim of her city as of herself here. Even if she could, she would not leave. (Uzushio is her home.) There is a flicker of silver, a fish comes gallivanting past and Arashi holds her breath.

Even shattered and under the sea, Uzushio is beautiful as the day she stood proud on the shores.

.

She has won.

A daughter stands in her ruins, cold fingers trailing reverently over her pillars and Uzushio knows that she has won this battle with time (Not the war –never the war.) She will not fall, not today, because there is someone yet who still remembers her, someone with the humming of the sea in her bones and someone with the cries of seagulls on her lips. Her child looks in wonder and Uzushio offers herself to her eyes, barren and broken as she is. She is beautiful now, even when in ruin, even when the gilded halls have fallen prey to the blood, even when basked in the blue light of the sea. She is beautiful as a bride on her wedding day and Uzushio will be reborn. She will stand anew.

She knows it, knows it like the hands that trail reverently across her stone because Uzushio sees her future inscribed in the very fibre of her soul. She will stand again. She will not fall. (Not yet.)

.

The seals glow bright with her passage. Arashi strikes a storm of light within the darkness of the sea, calls to her the life which still lingers in the stone as she scares away timorous fish and adventurous creatures. Arashi is taking back what is hers, she is taking back her mother and her city and her future – taking back the next step of her existence because Uzushio is far more than simply Arashi. She can feel it in her bones, the humming of a thousand voices which gather on the shore. Arashi is the first to come but she will not be the last.

The seals glow bright, pulsate with a light which chases away the sea and suddenly her lungs breathe the air in again. Uzushio laughs, laughs as the air greets her pillars once more and Arashi cannot help but be breathless at the sight of the hole in the sea. The city runs wide, but the sea runs wider. (As far as she can see, Arashi spots the sea, pushed back but waiting for a time when it will swallow Uzushio again.) Arashi supposes an earth user will rise the golden city from the bowels of the sea, but for the time being Arashi _trusts_ in Uzushio. She fears not her seals to fall, because Arashi is safe here. Uzushio loves her.

The grounds are slick with algae and sodden, but a simple katon jutsu scorches the stone dry. Fire cleanses, cleanses away the years of filth in the sea and Uzushio slowly reveals her splendour. She is gilded marble and painted reds, radiant turquoise embedded in cerulean sapphires. Uzushio is a gem and Arashi loves her.

.

They come now, flock to her as her song echoes louder in their veins. They hear her, hear her and heed her now but for all they come back, for all Uzushio loves her children with the same intensity, she cannot forget the frail little girl that activated her arrays. Uzushio loves all her children equally, but Arashi is special amongst those equal. Arashi is the first, the opener of the way home and Uzushio will never forget it. (It's why Arashi becomes Uzukage.)

There are seagulls again. White and grey against the midday blue sea, and Uzushio hears their cry once more. It is the promise of the sea.


End file.
